SOPHOCLES
The ruling power rests on the king who’s in the city.
He holds command in word and strength.
He lives in the ancestral capital.
A sense of fairness.
Noble.
I had to struggle in a foreign land.
I would never recoil from rescuing | a foreign alien.
I know full well that I am human.
Anger’s not appropriate | for someone in misfortune.
I will not let you down.
You would gain nothing further than my word.
My heart does not know dread.
Just my name | will shelter you against maltreatment.
The Thebans don’t encourage men to be corrupt.
These are quotes from Sophocles’ Oedipus Colonus, as translated by Oliver Taplin (2015), that Faniswa Yisa picked out as illustrative of the character of Theseus during her first exercise to understand the royal ruler she would be portraying in Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles. The picture that emerges is a king with a strong sense of justice, a humane sympathy for the less fortunate, and a self-assuredness. Although some of these quotes can be heard in the version embodied by Faniswa, the impression created is strikingly different from the benevolent Theseus of Sophocles, as his claims of fair treatment and nobility ring out with an undertone of deception.
Oedipus supplicates Theseus.
1 November 2022, day two of rehearsals. Mark and Faniswa set to work building the character of Theseus, the Athenian king who will offer Oedipus a place of sanctuary for his body to be buried. The aim is to gather material to construct a monologue that provides an insight into Theseus’ world view.
As an adaptation of, or rather, a response to, Sophocles’ tragedy, we can expect rigorous engagement with the source material. There is, but it takes perhaps an unexpected form. ‘Fundamentally’, says Mark during the very first discussion, ‘this isn’t a production OF Oedipus at Colonus. It is fundamentally… a re-imagination.’
From the outset, it becomes clear that Sophocles’ Theseus is to be a springboard rather than a direct object for imitation. This is often the case for classical reception, but rarely do we as researchers get the chance to see just how the classical source material is used in this process of experimentation, subversion, and re-imagination. For Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles, study of the mythical character is used to generate an image against which Magnet Theatre’s Theseus will be constructed, and as the rehearsals progress, Sophocles becomes less and less important.
Faniswa’s first task is to read through the Greek tragedy, identifying what Theseus says about himself and what other characters say about him. Faniswa works on this task for 49 minutes, after which, her first exclamation is, ‘They do not talk much about him!’ Through discussion, however, Faniswa and Mark piece together an image of Theseus’ ideology, focusing on how his private thoughts might differ from the beliefs he expresses in public.
Watch Faniswa and Mark dive into a textual analysis of Theseus, which Mark supplements with Theseus’ mythical background, and notice how quickly the discussion moves to comparing Theseus to Thabo Mbeki, bringing the character out of the mythical world and into the present.
The following day, Mark and Faniswa reflect on what place the mythology of Theseus will have in their production. Perhaps their version will end differently from Sophocles’ tragedy. There is a liberating, deliberate unfaithfulness to the source material, which becomes a powerful tool for infusing the character with renewed meaning. The Theseus of Sophocles in Oedipus at Colonus is, arguably, a rather one-dimensional personification of ‘the good guy’, in contradistinction to the ‘bad’ Creon. As classical scholar Adrian Kelly outlines (2009: 112), in Sophocles, our first impression of Theseus is of:
a hero mindful of his prerogatives and a king protective of his community, yet for all that also an intelligent man with an understanding of suffering and the limitations of humankind. His motives for accepting Oedipus into the city enshrine these characteristics […] honour and authority, moderation and pragmatism.
It is possible to read Theseus as an emblem of Athens’ self-perception as the proud founder of democracy, a beacon of light for the majority-Athenian spectators of 401 BCE. Sophocles presents the leader in an undeniably favourable way, as a ‘strong, fair-minded, and compassionate man, acting as the enlightened ruler of an Athenian “proto-democracy”’ (Markantonatos 2002: 84). Yet, how much more interesting Theseus becomes when this personification of noble Athens is revealed to be merely a façade for a self-centred politician, who does not really harbour his people’s interests at heart. His moralising proclamations, although unchanged from Sophocles’ words (Taplin 2015: 248–249, ll.631–635), thus become filled with irony:
Who would throw away
benevolence from such a man?
For one thing, there has always been alliance
forged between our houses;
and he has arrived, a suppliant of the gods,
with no small compensation for this land and ME.
Week 2, 7 November 2022, Faniswa, Jennie (Creon), and Mark sit down to read through Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and debate what Theseus’ motivations truly are for agreeing to grant Oedipus his final resting place in the sacred precinct of Colonus. Unlike the Sophoclean king, who acts according to his sense of righteousness and secures the chorus of citizens’ approval, this Theseus will act out of self-interest and against the chorus’ wishes, symbolising the rift between the self-serving politician and the people. Watch and listen to the team beginning to flesh out how their Theseus differs from that of Sophocles:
Mark is struck by Theseus’ words after he hears that Oedipus’ daughters have been abducted by Creon, instructing his guards:
ensure the girls do not get taken past that place,
which would make me ridiculous before this stranger,
humiliated by brute force,
Go as I say immediately.
(Taplin 2015: 260, ll.902–904)
Using this notion that Theseus is first and foremost concerned that failure to rescue Antigone and Ismene will make him look bad, the team begins to construct a Theseus whose primary concern is his own reputation.
That afternoon, workshop experimentation begins. Mark asks Faniswa to tell Theseus’ story in the third person, exploring Theseus’ more personal thoughts, in contrast to how he presents himself before the crowd. Watch and listen to her narrate Theseus’ story here, considerably revised from the Sophoclean Theseus, beginning at 7:22.
The improvisation is then taken further. Faniswa retells the story of Theseus, but this time, as an intsomi, a Xhosa fable. Watch her perform the intsomi in isiXhosa, exploring further possibilities to make Theseus more ‘at home’, less of a character from distant mythology:
Week three, 14 November 2022. After several days of experimenting with different ways Theseus could engage with the chorus, Faniswa and Andrew (Oedipus) work on the text developed by Qondiswa James, which blends extracts from Sophocles with a newly created political speech. Faniswa, Andrew, and Mark workshop the script, whittling down the Sophoclean text to its core elements, before playing around with staging possibilities.
Faniswa and Andrew in rehearsal.
First, Theseus stands upon a table, literally walking on a different level from the crowd, and invites Oedipus to join him, elevating him from the mob. Then, Theseus takes Oedipus by the arm and walks him up and down, whispering, turning the conversation from public to private. Watch them experiment with different options to create a separation between chorus and kings
Towards the end of the rehearsal phase, Mark, Faniswa, and Andrew reflect on the version of Theseus they have created. Their vision of Theseus is now much darker. No longer a ‘hero’, the ‘man of action’ who exhibits ‘the hallowed virtues of hospitality, compassion, and control of temper’ (Rosemeyer 1952: 100–101), Theseus has no redeeming features. Like Oedipus, and like Creon, he is arrogant, strongly opinionated, and harbours a sense of self-importance. At the end of the discussion, Mark conceptualises the tragedy as a tearing open of the wound that apartheid caused. The new leaders that emerged, the ‘Theseus’-men of the late 1990s and 2000s, rather than offering a cure, were merely a plaster, which masked, but did not heal, the wound. Ripping off that plaster, Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles examines the festering that occurs when there are no heroes, only façades of heroism.
Watch and listen to Mark, Faniswa, and Andrew discussing their final conception of Theseus.
